Audio and audiovisual type information and entertainment systems have become well known in recent years. These systems include not only well known broadcast radio and television media, but a plethora of systems and accessories that are intended to enhance and expand the use of television media, such as recorders, cable television networks, pay per view custom programming systems, and addressable receivers. Audiovisual recorders, commonly known as video cassette recorders, (VCR's) have become perhaps the most commonplace addition to all of these systems, enabling greater user control of the received audio and video programming.
VCR's are helpful for the storage of broadcast information so that it will not be missed by a user who is unavailable for its reception, by enabling the selective recording, often unattended, of audio and video information on a reel to reel style magnetic tape housed within a casesette. Furthermore, the features of many VCR's include control variations which aesthetically enhance the stored information during playback. While the programmability and enhanced features of many VCR's allow great user flexibility in the playback of recorded information, the construction of these reel to reel recorders and their media limit the flexibility of their usage in the accumulation of information to situations where an entire desired program of information or the terminal portion thereof is to be recorded because the user is absent or indisposed.
Frequently, programming is missed by the user due to interruptions of a more temporary nature, such as telephone calls, ringing doorbells, bathroom trips, etc.
While VCR's, as they are presently known, can be used to capture the missed programming segment under these circumstances of interruptions having a duration of less than the entire terminal portion of the desired programming, the user typically wishes to resume watching the programming immediately upon conclusion of the temporary interruption. In such a situation, the user will watch the recorded interrupted portion of the programming after having watched the end of the programming. This results in a substantial loss of continuity in so far as there may have been a significant event during the interrupted portion, thus making the post interruption segment difficult to understand or appreciate due to its reliance upon the information during the interrupted segment. This kind of situation is likely to occur in the case where the desired programming is a movie, or more so in the case of educational programming, where earlier presented information provides a foundation for the understanding of later presented information. Conversely, the opposite is also possible, where after having seen the end of the desired programming, the recorded interrupted intermediate segment suffers such diminution in value so as to be of little or no value for watching, thus making the recording thereof gratuitous.
Alternatively, the user is faced with recording the entire terminal portion of the desired programming so that upon completion of recording, the user may then resume watching the programming from the point at which the programming was interrupted. In this sort of situation, the user may end up waiting idly for completion of terminal segment recording. This can be undesirable, especially if the interruption occurs at an early point during the desired programming, and where the desired programming is lengthy.
Furthermore, another deficiency associated with prior art recorders and VCR's relates to the linear nature of access to information stored on the reel to reel media employed by these devices. Very often VCR users wish to watch programming stored at one location on the media while at the same time storing new programming information at a different location on the same media. Even though the rate at which modern electronic circuits and microprocessors is sufficiently fast to process both the storage of information from one received program and retrieval of stored program information so as to be effectively simultaneous from the user's perspective, because the magnetic heads can only access the small portion of media between the reels, and because the overwhelming majority of the storage media is wound onto the reels at any given moment, it is virtually impossible to access the media for information storage and retrieval at more than one location in substantially simultaneous fashion.
Consequently, a need exists for an improved recorder for audio or video signals or both.